Posted
by
timothyon Saturday August 24, 2013 @10:21AM
from the lives-of-others dept.

Jah-Wren Ryel writes "The latest twist in the NSA coverage sounds like something out of a dime-store romance novel — NSA agents eavesdropping on their current and former girlfriends. Official categories of spying have included SIGINT (signals intelligence) and HUMINT (human intelligence) and now the NSA has added a new category to the lexicon — LOVEINT — which is surely destined to be a popular hashtag now."

No, it's the other way around - In this case the people failing the polygraph are the ones engaged in unconstitutional surveillance of love interests. The interrogator is the one charged with overseeing them to make sure they don't violate policy.

> Where were you racist idiots when these programs were being started by President Bush?

Disagreeing with someone over policy has nothing to do with racism. That's a red herring whose only purpose is to stifle discussion. The truth is, those who keep playing that card are just crying "wolf," and it will eventually lose any meaning whatsoever.

For the record, I DID disagree with Bush on this endless surveillance, even though I'm a conservative.

hedwards (correctly IMHO) deduced the poster is racist from this comment:

"...everyone not merely the black man."

Or perhaps they don't want to use the bullshit politically correct moniker "African American"? Unless if you are a first or second generation immigrant from Africa, you should lose the right to that moniker IMHO. Let's just stick with the relatively inoffensive labels of black, caucasian etc.. Africa is a continent, not a race or even a country. Do you see people labeled as European American? No and it will be a bit silly to call a white Australian who immigrated to the US an European American.

well, technically a "white" man can be on of many various shades of pink and/or tan/olive** in skin color, and a "black" man's skin can range from a very pale beige to nearly jet-black. An Asian man's skin isn't really yellow at all (unless something like jaundice is involved).

"African American" could just as easily describe a pale blue-eyed dude from South Africa as it could a dude with jet-black skin from Rwanda or a more Arabic-looking gent from Egypt. QED: The term is ignorant at best. "Caucasian" is a

Although I will say it is a compliment to the levels of opportunities attained in the US, that racism is now rare enough, that it is being redefined such that racism now must include prejudice, just to be able to continue to complain about it.

Fuck you. I live in the south and racism is alive and good. So, fuck you, with rare enough. Rare enough for an uncaring white fuck like you maybe. The state of Texas is fighting to keep Hispanics from voting. They've been unable to show in court any valid reason (no fraud) for voter ID, but they're fighting hard for it, because they know how it will affect. Florida's been caught many times doing similar things (felons list only listing hispanics, etc). If you go to rural areas in the south people still call black people nigger. In public, without any shame, so fuck you. Fuck you to hell.

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. Where were you racist idiots when these programs were being started by President Bush? Seems to me that it was only when we got a black President that suddenly these things became a problem.

Please cut out the ridiculous accusations of racism. Whether you noticed or not, there has been a fairly sustained clamor about the Patriot Act, beginning with that ill-conceived law's passage. The clamor is louder during the current administration because (thanks to Snowden) we know more about the abuses now.

There's an unfortunate pattern of responding to any criticism of President Obama with "racist! racist!" whether there's any evidence of racism or not. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Obama and his administration, several of them potentially impeachable offenses (yes, including starting an unauthorized war). But getting back on subject, since there isn't any racism evident in the comment to which you were responding, I'd thank you kindly if you would just shut your big mouth.

No, the sentence says no such thing. Perhaps if you would bother thinking about what was written you'd see that.

First off, there's no objective basis for claiming that Obama's policies are worse on any objective basis than W's were. We know more about what Obama is doing than what W was doing, but I have yet to see any evidence that Obama is torturing anybody. Whereas even W himself admitted that he was torturing people. Sure, he didn't use the word "torture" but he's acknowledged ordering the water boardin

Yes it is, but you posted it anyways. There was *more* of an outcry when this stuff happened under Bush, because the press hated him. Not enough to get it stopped, alas. But we have to keep trying. Focusing on somebody almost six years gone will be a great way to ensure that nothing continues to get done.

From reading the right-wing web sites, like the Wall Street Journal comments page, it's clear that racism is one of the things that drives the right-wing anti-Obama movement. And you can hear this from their right-wing "leaders" too.

They're recycling the Reagan-era tropes about welfare mothers and lazy, irresponsible black men. (Which were themselves recycled from the racist South.) Sometimes they use code words and sometimes they come right out and say it.

Just because there are people opposed to President Obama for racist reasons doesn't mean that there aren't rational reasons to oppose his policies.

One of the big problems with the partisan divide in the US is that each side can point to a subset of crazies on the other side and claim that the crazy's views invalidate all the opinions on the other side.

It's true that there are some racist Democrats. But the Republicans use racism as a basic strategy to divide Democrats -- and Americans.

Both parties do whatever they can to divide us. All these divisions keep us from seeing the real issues that we get fucked on.

Do you think Exxon or BP give a flying fuck about abortion rights?

Do you think Blackwater cares what color you are

Do you think the MPAA gives 2 shits if you engage in gay marriage?

Do you think the NSA gives a hoot about immigration reform?

Do you think Boeing has nightmares about obesity and school kids diet?

Their agendas are much different, and much more nfarious, because we are manipulable dollar signs or targets to them. (maybe not to the NSA, but we are to the corporations that provide them and the TSA et all equipment, research, training, etc.)

The politicians do not care, because as long as they get CORPORATE money, they can swing voters to get in on the divisive shit. That is not to say that racism, gun control, immigration, abortion, etc are not important, but they are the lubricants with which we are finding ourselves more easily fucked.

Where were you racist idiots when these programs were being started by President Bush? Seems to me that it was only when we got a black President that suddenly these things became a problem. And none of you folks ever bother to mention that these policies were started by the GOP. Most of us on the left never wanted these policies in the first place, but it's not like voting GOP would have offered a better situation. So, we mostly voted for somebody that was going to fix something. Which he did, DOMA is over, DADT is over, ACA passed and he hasn't started any pointless wars.

But, unfortunately, he's staying the course on things that I would rather he not stayed the course on. But, you're a naive moron if you think that Romney or McCain wouldn't have. And in all likelihood they would be abusing it even worse.

Yo dawg, I'm sorry, your, "I'm sorry, this is bullshit", is bullshit.

Trying to paint everyone who does not like Obama as bigoted big establishment Republicans is a false dichotomy. Open your mind to this possibility, there are people that did not like Bush or McCain, do not like Obama, and would rather not have voted for Romney.

Here's a little tip for you, sparky: tossing off insults like "racist" doesn't excuse the crimes that are currently being perpetrated on the teleprompter-in-chief's watch, and trying to excuse them on the basis that they happened first during the Bush regime raises the question of what anyone gained then by picking Obama over the other guy. Wasn't Obama supposed to be the guy offering "hope and change"?

As for starting wars, well: you're flat out lying. Obama has committed acts of war against Yemen, Libya, Egypt, and is about to do so to Syria without even getting a fig-leaf non-declaration of war like Bush did.

Regarding gay rights, well praise him! Praise him for coming around on the gay marriage issue only a little while after Dick fucking Cheney did.

Crying "racism" denigrates everyone who hates Obama for his bad policies, and belittles Obama himself by portraying him as a man whose sole reason for being judged is being black.

If anyone is racist, it's those who cry "racism" in the face of years of stupid and abusive policies. They can't argue against the points, so they play the race card. It's bullshit. Obama is more than a black man. Give him some credit for being able to instigate hatred for reasons other than the colour of his skin.

You are what is wrong with this country. Your response to Obama's treasonous betrayal of the country is to start playing party politics.

Are you seriously so stupid as to think you're doing anything other than enabling this shit? Is your point really that we shouldn't criticize Obama because Romney would have been worse? Really? Because that's what you're saying.

And none of you folks ever bother to mention that these policies were started by the GOP

I also tend not to remind people that water is wet or that the sky is blue because there is no reason to remind them. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO STA

Yes it was. According to the article most of these were only found out during un-related lie-detector sessions, not by any auditing system. It poses the question - how many other cases of abuse have slipped by because the employee knew how to fake out the lie detectors?

Probably a significant number. Polygraphs are at best 85-95% reliable, according to supporters, and the real reliability is probably substantially lower for people that have to pass a polygraph in order to get hired. What's worse is tha the type of people that would be engaged in this sort of thing are much less likely to think it's wrong or expect to be caught. If you don't think something is wrong and don't expect to be caught, the likelihood of a polygraph catching you is minimal.

I used to run the IT compliancy in a mid-size company (2500 employees). I know the technical and process options you have, and frankly, this should either not be possible at all (technology solution) or have been caught during auditing (process solution). This is the kind of stuff that Separation of Duties was invented to prevent.

Oversight. Don't you get it at all. You are being handed another charade. NSA is meant to secure and gather intelligence, not act upon it, it was never set up that way.

You are being handed the "BIG LIE", what counts is what other agencies who received private information from the NSA, who had access to the electronic interception established by the NSA, did with that illegally obtained information. They are now looking to through out a few scape goats, a smoke screen to hide the others well beyond the confines of the NSA.

How much information did the US Department of Homeland Security receive from the NSA. What was the nature of the information, who had control over it and what did they do with it. The NSA are a direct feeder of information into the CIA, again, what information was received, who had access and what did they do with it. Next up the FBI, how much were the FBI in bed with the NSA, why did the FBI allow agents of the NSA to freely break the law. What information did the FBI receive and what did they do with it.

Now you would think it would stop there, but oh no, it get's far far worse. It is public knowledge the corporate security contractors had full access to the information being gathered under the NSA auspices. Private for profit individuals with total and full access to all the intelligence information, now what the hell did they do with that information and who else did they give it too. What politicians and their backers had access to what information, to leverage power.

Now you are getting a pretty little song and dance about a couple of NSA agents being naughty, all the while else the NSA provided access too with out any control at all and no record of what they did and Uncle Tom Obama the choom gang coward pretending it all stops at the NSA's door. The intelligence gatherer and not at the CIA's, Department of Homeland Security, FBI's et al (basically the whole US military industrial complex and it's financing banks). Those are the organisations that act upon the information provided by the NSA, they were all in on it, they all knew it was going on and they all had access to the information.

It is public knowledge the corporate security contractors had full access to the information being gathered under the NSA auspices. Private for profit individuals with total and full access to all the intelligence information

I'm going to need a cite for that because I've been following this pretty closely and this is the first I've heard of private citizens having "total and full access" to the NSA's data.

It is public knowledge the corporate security contractors had full access to the information being gathered under the NSA auspices. Private for profit individuals with total and full access to all the intelligence information

I'm going to need a cite for that because I've been following this pretty closely and this is the first I've heard of private citizens having "total and full access" to the NSA's data.

No, he was a contract employee. A "corporate security contractor" would be a company like Blackwater/Xe/Academi. The implication of the OP is that these private firms were able to request data from the NSA for their own purposes, not that people who worked for the NSA on contract did the same jobs as direct employees of the NSA.

>You migjht as well propose that corporations have moles in the ranks of the direct employees.

Exactly. We *know* we have direct employees abusing their power for personal reasons. What makes you think contract employees are going to be any *less* corruptible faced not with personal curiosity, but with the favor of their wealthy and powerful employers?

Not that I would be at all surprised to find that corporations have their moles in the direct ranks either - I mean the evidence is pretty plain that our

No, he worked at a government facility. [wikipedia.org] So do us all a favor and shut up until you figure out how to fact check yourself. You and your screaming ignorance only make this fight harder for the people who do know what they are talking about.

There was also a lot of praise for the Obama re-election software, which was able to help him target exactly the right people to win a very difficult re-election battle. I wonder where they got their data from.

That was no secret at all. They don't need the NSA to figure out consumer profiles, there is already a billion dollar industry doing exactly that already. BlueKai, Facebook, Doubleclick, etc. There are hundreds of companies dedicated to figuring that stuff out based on credit-card usage, loyalty card usage, census data, voter registration records, purchasing history, salary history, etc.

No one is surprised, but what about spying on other people's sexting (or whatever you call it when people send revealing pictures of themselves via email). If you really want the general public to get properly outraged over this stuff, forget the 4th Amendment, and find cases of Carly sending interesting pictures of herself to her boyfriend, with the expectation of privacy (forget the technical aspects of whether that expectation is reasonable - human decency says you don't read other people's mail).

It's actually better if Carly, and a bazillion others are at least 18. Otherwise it would degenerate into a discussion of "child pron", whether it was reported, individual criminals at NSA, yada, yada, yada. 18+ women sending revealing pictures of themselves to boyfriends/husbands, and people at the NSA checking them out, is exactly the sort of Peeping Tom behavior that would get the whole country up in arms.

Check out the this article [bbc.co.uk] and search for the section on Geoffrey Prime and read what he got up to.

And remember his "data collection" was done on pieces of card, and was before the days that most adults/parents carry mobile tracking devices around with them so their locations could be known at most times.

Hopefully. If everyone knows how bad an idea this is, but we all just go along with it because meh, then that doesn't really say good things about our ability to make decisions.

It wouldn't be a whole lot better if most people went along with the NSA because they honestly believed it was necessary and wouldn't be abused, but at least that would mean that stories like this coming out could make them realize it was a bad idea and change it. Wheras if it's just apathy, then that's not going to be changed a

No, and I'm afraid that endless surveillance is going to become the "New Normal."

If something can be done, it WILL be done, regardless of any laws passed to stop it. People are curious, people want power, people want control. For better or worse, the Digital Age is upon us, and all the laws in the world are not going to stop a determined person from digging into your data if he/she wants to. They'll just find better ways to hide what they're doing.

Think about it. The government's approach to this has been to punish the LEAKERS who've brought attention to the surveillance. Not to make any meaningful changes in the surveillance itself. That, right there, proves my point.

Obama [youtube.com] told us that program is not being abused. If the American people examine what was going on the people would say it was ok, they are following the law, they would be ok with what is going on.

I'm having a hard time finding a statement by Obama since reelection where he told the truth. Am I the only one that finds that odd?

Do you REALLY believe any intelligence agency is going to tell the truth to their supposed bosses? TLAs, especially those involved in espionage, deal in lies every day. They call it 'disinformation' or 'security procedures', no matter what their country of origin or who the ultimate boss is. Just look at the CIA under Dubyah. They got told to 'find the WMDs' and came up with the sketchiest evidence possible, then sold it to the powers that were because if they found nothing, they woulda been fired and r

Joking aside, it's a well-known fact dating back to well before the roman empire that family is a vulnerability that can be exploited in warfare. The NSA, like any good intelligence agency, keeps track of all exploitable weaknesses in both its own agents as well as the enemy's.

I don't think this is particularly newsworthy -- the problem with the NSA isn't their capabilities, but rather who they're using them on. Very often, it seems the NSA is being run more like the FBI; chasing down the political adversar

Actually it's not that unlikely that your girlfriend/boyfriend might be a terrorist if you work for the NSA. Just think of it, the perfect way to infiltrate the system. If anything this should be mandatory procedure for all NSA employees.

Actually it's not that unlikely that your Slashdotting colleagues are bureaucrats/politicians. Just think of it, the perfect way to infiltrate the opposition. When they get control of enough karma they can begin manipulating which opinions get heard and which do not by a segment of the pro software-, speech-, and political-freedom movement.

That's not the way background checks for security clearances work. You don't snoop on your own wife/girlfriend/whatever. The agency has people that check out your activities and associates from time to time for any potentially compromising (blackmail potential) situation or connections to foreign intelligence or criminal groups. Other information uncovered is rarely fed back to the employee.

The late, great East German Spymaster Markus Wolf, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_wolf [wikipedia.org] , aka "The Man Without a Face", was a virtuoso at this. In post-war West Germany, there was a shortage of eligible bachelors, and an overabundance of lonely, frumpy spinster single secretaries working for important politicians. He slipped in East German romeos who were more than welcomed by the secretaries . . . and didn't mind handing over a few frivolous documents that they were typing for their bosses. The secr

Yeah this is exactly why people have a real problem with ubiquitous spy networks. They will inevitably be abused. What happens when the government changes and the new guys don't mind using this apparatus to suppress political dissent? What happens when dissent has been suppressed, the administration becomes the aristocracy and the president effectively becomes king? It's happened before in many places, and the only lesson to take away from all this is that the price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance.

This is something we should all understand: There's effectively no difference between "actual abuse" and "a system that enables abuse with no accountability". If you have a system that enables abuse without the proper safeguards against abuse, then it's only a matter of time before people start taking advantage of the situation.

Both Moses and George Washington used spies, and Benjamin Franklin opened other people's mail for intelligence purposes. Do you think it is too much to ask that the US and its allies be allowed to use them in our age to prevent a surprise nuclear attack, and maybe the occasional 9/11 or bombing? Or is that just right out? Is the only "ethical" thing to do simply carting away large numbers of bodies after an attack and rebuild the airplane / stadium / city, assuming there aren't new overlords at that point who prevent it? What about the rights of the victims? Isn't the right to life the most basic right of all? What would you do for them, to prevent their being killed? Or does that not matter? Would you even approve of Thomas Jefferson's actions [city-journal.org] to prevent Americans from being taken into slavery, or as hostages?

Your strawman needs new clothes, he's becoming very recognizable. Not drinking enough of the koolaid? Or is that you COINTELPRO?

As Bruce Schneier says, you don't find a needle in a haystack by piling on more hay.

Look at some of the articles that were written by real intelligence agents, like the ones who interrogated the Nazis during and after WWII. They all knew German very well. If you're interrogating German officers it's a good idea to know German. Duh.

If you think you're engaged in a war with with Arabic terrorists, it would be a good idea to learn Arabic and Farsi. Before you start tapping every cell phone and Internet connection in the world, it would be a good idea to start by reading their newspapers (rather than depending on MEMRI).

The lazy thing to do is to sit on your ass behind a computer and, if you have an infinite budget, scoop up every electronic communication the world and save it "just in case." Then if you see somebody talking about terrorism, arrest them and keep them in prison forever "just in case." Which is what we're doing.

The smart thing to do (and here I betray myself as a liberal) is to understand your adversary, and find out why they hate you so much and if there's anything you can do about it.

After 9/11, the Wall Street Journal offices, which faced the WTC, were destroyed and they had to put the next day's edition together in an editor's uptown apartment. They spent the next year using their network of reporters (many of whom did speak Arabic and Farsi) interviewing people around the world trying to figure out why they hated us. That's what Daniel Pearl was doing.

One of the themes that kept coming up again was Israel. One Arab businessman was a subscriber to the WSJ. He said, "I like America. I got my MBA in America. But you've got to do something about Israel." For the moderate, westernized Arabs, "doing something about Israel" means stopping the settlements (which is reasonable) and a two-state solution with Israel on the 1967 borders, which Hamas and the Arab League have already agreed to.

The way to protect our country is to do real intelligence, find out what the rest of the world is thinking, and go after the basic causes.

Spying on love interests is one thing, but spying on innocent children to plan sexually assaulting them is a different category. It's happened before [bbc.co.uk], and I don't understand how people can still defend these monstrous surveillence activities.

Why won't someone think of the children when it's finally appropriate?

lol or as Smiley says re control at controls funeral "he went to his grave with his wife believing he was mid ranking official at the coal board" or in Spooks (MI5) Sir harry piece commented "oh i told my ex wife when we signed the bans in church"

But what about intercepting phone sex calls of troops with their loved ones? And not just intercepted, shared between them when the conversation was hot.

And they did that with soldiers, in an environment where their superiors were more or less aware of what they were doing, so they restricted themselves in what they could do. What kind of respect you can expect from them? What kind of respect should they (as people and as institutions) deserve?

Oh, this is for your safety, so all is justified, except that the most monitored countries includes China, Russia, France, Germany, Japan, and Brazil, This is more about starting a war (and/or stealing IP) than defending from terrorists.

I keep saying setting rules agents "are supposed to follow" isn't good enough, and should be constitutionally invalid in the computer age.

The rules against warrantless searches have to do with political spying, not mundane spying, even on girlfriends by jackasses. If they can get away with this, operatives working for someone powerful can get away with tapping an opponent's phones.

They need security software that cannot be bypassed that logs everything in incorruptible logs for future review, and auto-stor

They need security software that cannot be bypassed that logs everything in incorruptible logs for future review, and auto-stored at multiple sites without delete communication (someone at any given site cannot send out a signal to alter or delete logs at other sites.)

No. We need to get rid of the entire organization and get rid of the system they have in place to wiretap to begin with.

"administrative action or termination."...OR termination? Every single one of them should have been fired at the least. If I looked up an ex girlfriend on the electronic medical record system I'm logged into right now, I would be subject to a $50,000 dollar fine and a year in prison even after being fired ( AMA HIPAA penalties page [ama-assn.org]). This kind of abuse of access to privileged information similar to a HIPAA violation, except double illegal since most of the surveillance has no legal basis either.

I work in the medical field also and have personally seen it happen. We had someone who was in a position of IT power and had been with the organization awhile. He was caught looking at things he shouldn't have been and was immediately fired. This was a guy whose job security - before this incident - seemed rock solid, no previous incidents (to my knowledge which admittedly might not be perfect in this matter). Just one day there and the next day gone. He wasn't even allowed to clear out his office right then. They had him come back another day and - under a careful eye to make sure he only took his own stuff - let him clear out his office.

The more power (and access to information counts as "power") you have, the steeper the penalties should be for abusing that power. If the NSA is going to have access to nearly everything whenever they want (something I think they shouldn't have), they should have STRICT penalties for misusing said access. They should have systems that double-check access and the first time you search for something you shouldn't, you're FIRED!

This isn't a "latest twist in the NSA saga". It's a transparent PR fluff piece.

Obviously the PR division at the NSA figured out a plan to trivialize the revelations. John DeLong at his press conference comes out with "Oh yes, once or twice in the past decade we have broken the rules, but it's been for lighthearded laughable trivial matters like LOVEINT. Ha ha ha, what a joke. My bad. We're all good now, right?"

Of course the media will lap this up. And it distracts attention from the real systematic unconstitutional behavior of the NSA, and the fact that the NSA's overseers themselves believe their oversight to be inadequate.

Obviously the PR division at the NSA figured out a plan to trivialize the revelations.

If that's their plan, it is a stupid one. For most of the population spying on politicians and fat-cats is unrelatable. But having a lover break trust and spy on you is something just about everybody has experienced be it snooping through your phone, your email, or even just the stuff in your house.

One of the big reasons the public is apathetic to the NSA is that most people just don't see how it could ever affect them personally. With these revelations the NSA has made it crystal clear to the general public just how "icky" the NSA can be.

It might not be the best reason to be pissed off about the NSA, but it is the kind of thing that most people can immediately feel in their gut and that counts for a lot in this fight.

Still just a distraction from STOCKINT. Follow the money. The first time I considered such massive surveillance, front-running market events was what came to mind. This is just like anything else in politics. Get people thinking about sex to distract them from the real crimes.

It's about patents, technology, tech secrets, major trade deals, contracts, and so on.

Guess which European company has the most massive interest in security and installs six-digit hardware encryption routers in even minor switching rooms? No, it's not a bank. It's not a stock exchange, either. It's Airbus.

Here in Europe, it's been an open secret for almost two decades that our "american friends" are doing massive amounts of economic espionage on us.

You've got guys listening in on ex-wives, dropping in on calls from soldiers overseas, checking out what movie stars are up to...

Now, to be fair, a lot of this (as others have pointed out) is just what you would expect from a group of people given that kind of power, but the details match up so perfectly, I wonder if Sorkin was tipped off by someone.

He he. Some idiot one day thought "we fired his ass" was too harsh and not fancy enough, so started saying "we terminated his employment." Then some other idiots simplified that to "we terminated him." So now instead of saying "we fired his ass" all the PHBs and personnel drones just say "we killed him."

The hypocrisy of the/. crowd it quite stunning : most of them would do exactly the same if given the chance.

I believe you're tarring yourself there more than your intended targets. I've never given a rat's ass about co-workers' or supervisors' personal secrets or private lives. I very much doubt that anyone who chooses tech for a career would find that cruft the least bit interesting. If you do, you might find reality TV more entertaining than/.